DEREK CURTIS BOK-

By virtue of the authority granted to me by the Corporation and the Board of Overseers, in their name, and in accordance with ancient custom, I declare that you, Derek Curtis Bok, having been duly chosen to be the twenty-fifth President of Harvard College, are vested with all of the powers and privileges appertaining to that office, and are empowered to exercise the same during the pleasure of the Governing Boards. And I herewith deliver to you the insignia of your authority.

AIN'T they got no shame?" reads a sign on the blackboard in the second floor room in Mass Hall. The sign is red chalk, and against the slate smooth surface of the blackboard resembles a question written in dried blood, a dead man's last words.

"Ain't they got no shame?" that is the basic question here. April rain falls in the windless chill of the night outside. A picket line, chanting, marches to the song on the loud speaker. "For God's sakes, you gotta give more power to the people," the song goes, and the pickets, no longer a mere line of defense against the potential bust of Mass Hall, chant on rhythm: "Soul Power! Give More Power to the People," Clenched fists, black and white, thrust up into the rain. "Ain't they got no shame?"

Inside, the blanketed black bodies lie strewn about the carpet and couches of Derek Bok's office. It is 2:30 in the morning on Monday. The occupation is 93 hours old. The bodies sleep without sound. The fear that their sleep might be interrupted by a club in the head or a police boot in the groin has long since died within them. In the hallway outside, a girl in a pink blanket informs the few still awake downstairs that it's after curfew and everyone but the Night Crew should be sleeping. In the timelessness inside this occupied building, her directive has a physical authority, and the last bodies find their ways to the floor. Everyone inside is aware that the game is now a test of stamina. There has been a little less laughter today, a few more headaches, and faces showing the tension of engaging in the long pull. People's concerns have expanded to include questions like health, as the occupier's translate yesterday's catch-phrase. "We'll be here when they come," into the physical language of practical and tactical adjustments.

THE ONE thing that's clear now is that we'll be here when they come," Randall Robinson of PALC said when I asked him Saturday what would happen if the police come. "We'll have to see when the police come," Jim Winston also PALC added. "It's up to them in some respects."

The burden of response is now clearly again on Bok and the University. Their decision to retain possession of the Gulf stock in the face of the opposition of what Robinson terms "the overwhelming African voice" was retorted 14 hours later by the seizure. The Administration's efforts to bluff by injunction were similarly answered and the seizure became an occupation, outside the law, and for the moment at least, no longer in the focus of national attention.

However, the current condition is a hollow truce and not a resolution. As it is on the blackboard of the second floor storeroom, the fundamental question here, "Ain't they got no shame?" is still unanswered.

One can expect this occupation to last until that question is resolved. As one sophomore in the occupation put it, "We'll be here when they come, unless they sell the Gulf stock."

THE voice on the radio was slow and heavy. "Had they not agreed," Derek Bok explained. "we would have voted against the company and made that very clear to them." The University had received an "expressed commitment" from Gulf management that they would disclose the particulars of their operations in Angola. In effect, Harvard had successfully elicited from Gulf in private negotiations the proxy objective that Harvard's three-tenths of one per cent of the company's shares could not have secured at the stockholders' meeting.

Mathematically, it was an impressive finesse. Equivalent perhaps in the game of corporate diplomacy to the Ali Shuffle. Relaxed and confident during the press conference in which the decision was first announced. Bok enumerated the constructive trade-offs implemented by the Corporation's decision with all of the rational enthusiasm of a Plimptonesque first-timer. Confronted with a sticky wicket, he had nonetheless prevailed. But as Bok discovered when the call came at dawn Thursday morning, there were people who were not impressed by Harvard's corporate shuffle. Throughout that day and into the next, a steady stream of people both inside and outside the University informed Bok of how unimpressed they were.

Congressman Charles Diggs, Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Africa and the first chairman of the Black Caucus, told Bok in a telegram that:

"I wish to associate myself with the position taken recently by black students at Harvard on the issue of the University's shameful involvement with Gulf Oil. Those actions taken by the students do not surprise me. These are necessary actions to demonstrate their deeply felt opposition to your Corporation's stated position. It is a position that is morally bankrupt and unworthy of an institution with such a reputation."

The Harvard Association of Black Faculty blasted the Corporation's position statement as "Harvard's flat refusal to admit its duplicity and accept its responsibility for its immoral actions;" while over two dozen white faculty signed a statement calling the Gulf investment "morally indefensible."

Yet perhaps the most significant statements came from a man with no other credentials than his personal experience in Angola. Robert Van Lierop, who had co-conducted the Gulf teach-in here in March, spoke again on Friday in front of Mass Hall. Van Lierop, a film maker and journalist who moonlights as a restaurant worker, is recognized by Africanists as the most perceptive observer of the situation in Angola and Mozambique and is currently finishing a film he shot in Portuguese Africa. He said, "Harvard's explanation for owning Gulf stock is like when you see a woman being raped by ten men you jump on and become the eleventh because she's already getting fucked."